I have been thinking a great deal about pursuing a PhD. For me, it’s a debate of time; it’s hard for me to dedicate too much time to any one thing, and pursuing a PhD requires a significant amount of time in a specific field of study. However, my reason for wanting to do it, and I think I will at some point regardless, is that I want to prove it can be done without losing your mind in the process. I want to prove that if you look at the world with your face up against the glass, you can still see. And I could do just that, and in the aftermath, I could be very dangerous. However, typically, it costs around half a million dollars to pursue a PhD, and the time commitment is mind-numbing. However, it could be fun if it were in a field that you enjoy. I want to pursue one in Bible Studies, Philosophy, or Archaeology because I am passionate about these topics and have many ideas on how to improve them for the betterment of human civilization. But unfortunately, and this is just how things are in the living world, what you want to do and what you should, or could do, is not always the same. And the skill that I am best at, which is specifically me, is consuming vast amounts of random information and solving problems outside the box. And that is something I wouldn’t be able to do if I had my face too close to the glass for an extended period. My reasons for pursuing a PhD are not the traditional ones, but rather to demonstrate that one can be obtained despite the institutional problems in the process.
The best example of this is in Qesem Cave, a topic I first learned about while reading my favorite magazine in the world, the November/December 2007 edition of Biblical Archaeology Review, which was available in print at the time. Later, in December, I noticed a brief online article about Qesem Cave that had not been included in the print edition, and I thought it was astonishing. Here, a cave was discovered just outside Tel Aviv, Israel, and about an hour’s drive to the west of Jerusalem, that had human habitation 420,000 years ago. The cave was discovered while building a highway connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the interior, and its existence was entirely a matter of happenstance, which I found alarming. How many Qesem Caves were there in the world just waiting to be discovered, just short of the surface of the earth? And the answer is an astonishing amount that we are just starting to wrap our heads around, especially in hostile zones like China, Russia, and all over the Middle East. However, this discovery was so unusual and difficult to categorize that even in an archaeology magazine that typically reports on such issues, they weren’t quite sure what to say about it. Because it didn’t fit any previous assumptions about the region. And even then, it took seven years from its discovery for the world to learn about it. And since then, it has been researched a bit here and there up to 2016. However, much of the work has been relatively small in scope because the discovery process is overly bureaucratic and detrimentally procedural. The most intelligent people on the planet who could study these kinds of things were too tied up in peer review commentary to even begin to think of something that was not within the box of their specialized fields of study.
But Qesem Cave proves something I had long been thinking about in the specific region of the Bible lands. I believe there was a very good reason why Abraham was instructed to sacrifice Isaac at the location he did, and that the Holy of Holies was situated where it was. And that the skull of the first human ever, Adam, was buried in a cave under the site where Jesus was crucified. Academics with their face up against the glass write off such stories as fictional apocrypha, but I think the desire to write such stories such as in The Book of the Cave of Treasures is because under modern Jerusalem is an ancient system of caves that were always there, and that Yahweh was very angry at the Canaanite culture which resided there for many hundreds of thousands of years, well outside our accepted timeline for the flood stories and evolution of the Biblical characters. I tend to think that the story of Genesis compresses millions of years into the arrival of Abraham, allowing the plot of the Bible to begin. And that its reference points reach too deep in the past to connect to historical anchors. And Qesem Cave proves this to be true, not just because humans were using it as shelter from the outside world and the elements, but also because they were practicing shamanic practices there, which would be the oldest spot in the world where such activity was observed. I think it’s just the tip of the iceberg. And that the world is filled with such places. However, the Holy Land is so well-documented that a discovery like this can’t be ignored in any historical discussion.
Inside the cave were elements of apparent ritual activity using swan wings to mimic shamanic spirit flight while under the influence of hallucinogens, which the current argument is the foundation of all religious belief, the deliberate attempt for people to reach across known perception and talk to spiritual entities to assist with daily life. And biblically, we have people talking to what they think is God a lot. Qesem Cave reveals that this kind of practice has been ongoing for a much more extended period than previously understood. And for me, that’s a big deal, which is why I’m considering getting a PhD. I want to prove that you can achieve this without compromising your ability to think critically when new information is introduced. As I am, I excel at solving complex problems because my knowledge base is extensive. However, academia is designed against the broad acquisition of knowledge and is structured to be too specific, making it difficult to incorporate new information and advance understanding. And that’s why Qesem Cave has been so little explored, and why the Indian mounds of North America, and the world, get so little attention, because they don’t fit a narrative that academics have staked a stake in, and many PhD papers were written. I think the best and only way to shatter that assumption is to undertake one myself, so that I can conduct my thesis on the shortcomings of the current PhD process. We should encourage people to think primarily about multiple matters, rather than focusing on a limited vantage point, and then make the process so complicated that, once you survive it, you are changed forever by the experience. I interact with many people who hold advanced degrees every day, and I would say I know more of them than most people do. And I like them, but they all share the same problem: they think too specifically and do not think large enough to deal with the vast world of knowledge that we have yet to unlock. And in the process, they are often paralyzed by the procedure and cannot see the obvious. And that is precisely what Qesem Cave, which I think is one of the most incredible discoveries in the world, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt. And what is both scary and delightful is that it’s just the beginning. As far as me getting a PhD, I would like to get to a point in my life where I could take a few years and just think about the things I enjoy thinking about. It would be fun, and I could do a lot of good things with it. I may not be at that stage in my life now, but if and when I could, I think I would.
Rich Hoffman
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